“What does ‘impeached’ mean, literally?” wonders La Bonavita aloud. “It sounds like what happened to James in the book,” he adds.
I think about this.
“No,” I say slowly, “no, James wasn’t impeached. He was enpeached. Because the –im prefix is a negation, like impolite, but the en prefix, is, like, being in something, like enfolded, or engulfed. Right?”
La Bonavita looks unconvinced.
I continue, “So, being enpeached is much, much better than being impeached.”
“In fact,” I say, warming to my theme, “you could even say they’re opposites. Because being impeached is being, like, slapped in the face, whereas being enpeached is … well, I mean obviously I don’t actually know,” I admit, sheepishly, “but from the book it sounds, you know, pretty amazing.”
Illustration by Nancy Ekholm Burkert from the first edition of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach (1961)
Do you know Annie Dillard’s line about “unpeaching the peaches” in Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek? The one time I was asked to teach creative writing (to a handful of wonderful high school students at a “pre-college summer program,” a.k.a. glorified summer camp) the whole course was organized around that line.